Environmental Justice

A QUEST FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: Healthy, High Quality Environments for All Communities

The 2001 interdisciplinary conference was co-sponsored by Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice and Southeastern Connecticut Indoor Air Quality Coalition. Environmental justice deals with the distributional impact of pollution damages. Do communities that host toxic facilities, for example, have a higher percentage of minorities and the poor relative to other communities? The empirical evidence on this issue is mixed. Some studies show that toxic facilities are likely to locate in minority or less affluent communities, while other studies find no statistical difference between the racial composition of communities that house hazardous waste treatment facilities and those that do not.

Conference Proceedings:

Our Backyard: A Quest for Environmental Justice. A collection of essays by local activists and nationally recognized scholars, Our Backyard deals with the history, status, and dilemmas of environmental justice. These essays provide a comprehensive overview of social and political aspects associated with environmental injustices in minority and poor communities. In addition to focusing on the actions taken by communities and politicians in response to an actual or perceived environmental risk, the contributors also deal with the methodological challenges confronting environmental justice research. Published in 2003.Published by:

About the Editors

Gerald Visgilio, professor of economics at Connecticut College, has spent nearly three decades teaching and working in environmental and natural resource economics. Diana Whitelaw had twenty years of experience with education programs for low income and minority children, their families and communities prior to joining the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment.

Speakers and Panelists

Timothy Black, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of the Center for Social Research, University of Hartford and John A. Stewart, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, Research Associate of the Center for Social Research, University of Hartford: Burning and Burying in Connecticut: Are Regional Solutions to Solid Waste Disposal Equitable?

Bunyan Bryant, Ph.D. Chair of Resource Policy and Behavior Concentration, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan: Environmental Justice: History, Issues, and Dilemmas